


Divisadero

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam was sixteen, Dean was his whole life. Now he’s twenty-nine, and Dean’s in Purgatory. He’s still Sam’s whole life, and Sam will do whatever it takes to get him back. AU after season 7. Basically I like backstory and I like Sam and Dean saving each other from stuff, so, um. Here's what I did with those two things?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sam

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [applegeuse](applegeuse.livejournal.com) for beta-reading and to [evian-fork](evian-fork.livejournal.com) for the [artwork](http://evian-fork.livejournal.com/114104.html?style=mine). ♥

divisadero  
 _noun_  
1\. a division  
2\. to gaze from a distance

Prologue

_Talking wasn’t usually their thing, but once, when they were sitting on the hood of the Impala, the starless black sky stretching endlessly over their heads, he’d asked a question that he remembered from a book: ‘If you could choose to live in any historical period, which would you pick?’_

_There was a pause, during which he wondered what the answer would be, several potential answers coming up in his mind: an endless stream of possibilities that ran through the shared terrain of their lives._

_The answer had been: ‘Right here, Sammy. Right now.’_

_Sam laughed, and leaned back against the Impala’s windshield. ‘Oh ye of little imagination,’ he said. Dean punched his shoulder and called him a geek._

_Even now, sometimes it seems that those possibilities are still alive. Even though he’s someone else now, he remembers eyes the color of rain-washed grass, remembers partings and reunions. Remembers taking himself away from that landscape, finding his way back there, having it all taken away again. Remembers who he’d been when his name was Sam Winchester, because memories are all he has until he gets his brother back._

 

\--

Part 1: Sam

‘Maybe I’ll marry a centaur,’ Sam says, looking up from his book. He’s in the driver’s seat of the Impala, parked in front of Bobby’s house, his book propped up on the steering wheel. Dad and Bobby are away on a hunt. Sometimes, on afternoons when they’re left alone, Dean goes out, returns late in the evening smelling of booze and cigarettes and sex. Sometimes, he chooses to hang out with his sixteen-year-old brother, and Sam hasn’t figured out why.

‘A boy centaur or a girl centaur?’ Dean asks from the back seat. He’s on his back, feet sticking out the window, a bottle of beer balanced on his chest, creating rings of condensation on his gray t-shirt.

Sam shrugs. ‘Whichever can ride the fastest.’

He doesn’t say ‘whichever can get me out of here the fastest’, but that’s what it sounds like.

The cold glass of Dean’s beer bottle touches the bare skin on the back of his neck. Sam squeals and flails, the palm of his hand hitting the horn. ‘You jerk!’

‘Whatever, bitch,’ Dean smirks, swallowing the last of his drink. ‘Go get me another beer.’

 

\--

 

Sam can easily get lost in books. Bobby’s library is the closest thing he knows to paradise, with its aging volumes and their musty, comforting smells. There aren’t many books that aren’t about the things they hunt, but tucked between an ancient book about runes and a rare edition of the Quran, he finds a book about the Gold Rush. He spends hours in the book, reading it thrice from cover to cover, imagining himself in that time, going off to make his fortune, wearing an Indiana Jones hat and riding a chestnut horse.

 

\--

 

In the book, there’s a brief record of an incident: _On this riverbank,_ says a small inscription below an illustration of a winding river, _two brothers killed each other arguing about which direction to travel._

Sam looks up from the book. It’s Dean’s turn to fix sandwiches for their lunch, and the sharp silver of his knife glints as he chops away at lettuce and tomatoes. Sensing Sam’s gaze, Dean tosses him an apple. ‘Here, chew on this for a while.’

Sam catches the apple and bites into it with a scrunch. Juice trickles down his chin, and he wipes at it absently with his sleeve, already back in his book.

 

\--

 

Somewhere in Bobby’s house is a small collection of photographs he takes of the boys as they’re growing up. There aren’t very many photographs; they often go for long stretches without seeing Bobby—once for as long as a year—and even when they do meet, there’s usually some Big Bad that’s got their attention.

The year Bobby gets his Asahi Pentax is also the year in which Dad leaves them at the junkyard for the entire summer. Dean’s eyes light up when he sees the camera for the first time, and for the rest of the summer, he and the Pentax are practically inseparable. Sam is his unwilling subject, made to pose for hours while Bobby goes off on hunts, leaving Dean his camera and some rolls of film to keep the boys amused and out of trouble.

There’s a little store-room next to the first-floor landing that Bobby’s converted into a dark room. Dean’s learnt to develop the film himself, and sometimes he lets Sam help, lets him hand Dean stuff or look over his shoulder at the wet paper in the orange tray, transfixed at the sight of an image slowly coming to life under the fixer. 

Once, when Dean’s out, Sam goes into the dark room by himself, feeling strangely guilty. Freshly-developed photographs are clipped up to dry, shining wetly in the red light from the overhead bulb. There are images of him that he expects to see, candid shots of him: caught in mid-shout as he tries to prevent Dean from photographing him when he’s just out of the shower, trying to hold on to the towel around his waist, reaching for the camera with his other hand, his hair sticking to his forehead in wet strands; standing in the middle of the kitchen, covered in flour after a failed attempt at baking, the image a little blurred because Dean had been laughing so hard; looking up in the middle of writing an essay, his hair mussed from running his fingers through it with frustration, the end of his pencil caught between his teeth.

Sam’s breath catches when he sees the last two images. There’s one of him sitting on the couch with an open book on his knees, his face turned toward the window as he watches the rain. Dean must have taken that a couple of days ago; Sam had thought he’d been out at the time. And another, probably taken that morning, since that’s the t-shirt he’d been wearing last night: his face squished into the pillow, only half-visible, the toes of one foot peeking out from under the blankets. 

 

\--

 

Their time at Bobby’s place is like an in-between time: no significant holidays or birthdays, just random weekends and summer breaks that consist of unidentified days and nights. 

To commemorate the time, label it so it won’t get lost in the desert of his memories, Sam creates his own anniversaries. 20 July: he’d just turned twelve and Dad had finally, finally allowed him to hunt. A couple of years before then, Dad had given Dean hell for telling Sam that monsters were real. Sam hadn’t heard the entire conversation, but Dad’s voice had gone low and growly as it did when he was really, really angry, and later, when it was over, Dean had come into their room, looking white and shell-shocked. Sam had tried to go to him, but Dean had pushed him away and thrown himself facedown on his bed, his shoulders shaking.

 

\--

 

The last photograph of Sam and Dean together is when Sam is sixteen. He’s leaning against the hood of the Impala, his elbows too warm against the sun-drenched metal. Dean’s sitting on the hood, an arm slung carelessly over Sam’s shoulders. Later, Sam comes to see that photograph as a dividing line between what they were and what they would become: going from inseparable to two individuals who diverged from each other with geometrical precision.

 

\--

 

12 August 1999: the first time Sam gets badly hurt during a hunt. They’re close to Sioux Falls, hunting with Bobby and a tall, ginger-haired Irish woman called Harriet. Sam gets thrown into a wall by a particularly vindictive poltergeist. Dean’s nowhere in sight, and Sam’s world is reduced to a haze of pain and confusion, and the slick warmth of blood leaking from beneath his hairline.

‘Dean?’ Harriet says, kneeling beside Sam and trying to help him sit up. They were introduced to her less than an hour ago as ‘Sam and Dean’, and she’s gotten them mixed up.

‘Dean,’ Harriet says again, lifting Sam’s head. ‘Bloody hell, you okay?’

Dean appears in the doorway then, and Sam’s vision clears enough to see how Dean’s eyes are fixed on him. 

Later that night, he lies on Bobby’s couch as the adults drink whisky and make plans for the next day’s hunt. Dean’s on the chair next to the couch, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He doesn’t talk much as he sips his beer, but he occasionally tilts his face down to Sam to ask him if he’s doing okay, reaches over to gently check the shallow wound at Sam’s hairline. He falls asleep with Dean’s hand resting on top of his head.

\--

 

There’s a tall, rickety water tower behind Bobby’s house. If he squints, Sam can make himself believe, Don Quixote-like, that it’s a monster on six spindly legs. No one but him is stupid enough to climb the flimsy structure, so when he really needs to get away, it’s where he goes.

There’s a little door at the top, big enough for a grown man to get through. Even in bright sunlight—or maybe especially in it—the water is too black, less a colour and more a huge nothing, a space to lose himself in.

He’d been thirteen the first time he’d jumped into the water. He’d panicked when he’d tried to get out, realizing with a sickening feeling that the water level was too low for him to reach the trapdoor above. He’d almost screamed for Dean before his scrabbling fingers had brushed against the ladder attached to the wall of the tank, invisible in the darkness. Then he’d begun to swim, ducking beneath the surface to give himself the illusion of drowning, but there was no danger any more from the water in the tank. 

By the time he’s sixteen, the water tower is no longer used. Sam goes there late one afternoon, lies on his back facing the closed trapdoor, wonders if he’ll run out of air if he stays there long enough. It’s dark inside, the bottom of the tank still faintly damp with the memory of water.

When the door is opened from above, he cries out at the suddenness of it, at the almost-painful stabs of light in his eyes. Dean says nothing, dropping lightly to the floor without bothering with the ladder. They sit in silence for a while, no movement in the small space except for Dean’s hand occasionally bringing his cigarette to his lips, a slow stream of smoke curling up to the ceiling and disappearing into the air outside.

‘Dean,’ Sam says eventually, watching Dean half-dozing across the floor from him.

‘What?’ It’s not a bad ‘what’, really. Dean’s head is in a patch of sun, his hair golden in the light. He looks warm and comfortable. 

‘I.’ Sam crawls across the floor until he’s next to Dean, their shoulders almost touching. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

‘You out of money again?’ Dean asks, without opening his eyes. ‘There’s a couple hundred in my wallet.’ He gestures vaguely toward his discarded jacket, lying rumpled on the floor beside them.

Sam shifts a little closer. Typical Dean. Always looking to provide, always making sure Sam’s got enough. Enough money, enough clothes, enough food, enough books. And now Sam’s got to tell him it isn’t enough.

He imagines Dean turning his head and seeing the look on Sam’s face, how the magic and comfort and warmth will drain instantly out of the small space around them. Sam’s fingertips itch as if he could hold on to all those things, gather them in his arms and shower Dean with them. 

‘Sam?’

‘No, I’m good.’

‘Then _what_?’ Dean shifts away, turning so they’re face to face. ‘C’mon, Samwise. Spill.’

Sam smiles. ‘Why can’t I ever be Frodo?’

‘Because Frodo’s the brave hero and Sam’s the sidekick. And the sex slave.’ 

Sam’s heart thuds painfully at that, and he doesn’t let himself think of the implications of what Dean’s just said. ‘Dude, Frodo’s a hobbit. He’s tiny. And has hairy feet.’

‘So’s Sam.’ Dean’s hand reaches to tug lightly at Sam’s earlobe, his thumb brushing against the soft skin behind Sam’s ear. ‘Stop trying to change the subject. Talk, Sammy.’

 

\--

 

‘Please say something,’ Sam says. He’s followed Dean into the kitchen, trailing him after he left the water-tower without a word.

Dean doesn’t answer, his back to Sam, his head bent forward as he leans against the counter, his knuckles taut against the edge. 

‘I won’t go,’ Sam says. ‘If you ask me to. I won’t go.’

Dean half-glances at him, his body still turned away from Sam. ‘You don’t mean that.’ 

‘Dean, no. I—I’ll listen.’

‘Okay, then. Don’t go.’ Dean turns around, his lips twisting into a wry smile that gets nowhere close to his eyes. ‘Stay. Stay with dad and me. Keep hunting and killing. Don’t even think of another life for yourself. That’s what I want for you.’

‘Dean, what—’

‘Obviously that’s what I’d want for you, right? To give up the chance to go to college, so you can stay and fight?’

‘Dean, I didn’t say—’

‘Then what did you say, Sammy?’

‘Don’t,’ Sam says, taking a step closer to Dean. ‘Please. Dean. I don’t want to fight.’

Dean steps forward too, meets Sam halfway. He puts a hand on top of Sam’s head, fingers scrunching up his hair. ‘Me either. I’m saying go, you little idiot.’

Sam looks up at him. ‘And you’re okay with that?’

‘I’m not okay with you leaving, Sammy. But getting you out of the life? Yeah, I’m cool with that. And if it means you have to leave, then you have to leave.’

‘Come with me.’ Sam’s fingertips press into Dean’s forearm. ‘Come with me, Dean.’

Dean’s hand brushes Sam’s face, a thumb briefly caressing his cheekbone. ‘Dad needs me, Sam. You know he does.’

 _I need you more._ If Sam were to say the words out loud, he’d want to say them with his face pressed into Dean’s neck, with his hands grasping Dean’s hips. 

He doesn’t say anything, lets Dean walk to the fridge and get them a couple of beers, the conversation already a memory.

 

\--

 

Dean’s black t-shirt is too large for Sam, but it’s warm and smells like Dean. Sam pulls the soft cloth down over his knees as he draws them up to his chest, his heels against the edge of the wooden chair, a thread from the fraying hem of his jeans tickling between his toes. He winds it around a finger and tugs it free, the tiny sound of snapping thread audible in the silent kitchen.

‘Sammy?’ Dean says from the doorway, his voice rough with sleep. Sam hears the rustle of fabric before Dean throws a blanket around him, his hands smoothing the soft wool over Sam’s shoulders. ‘It’s freaking cold. What’re you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ Sam says quickly. ‘M’okay.’

‘Like hell,’ Dean mutters, sliding into the chair next to Sam’s.

Sam shrugs. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

Dean yawns, dropping a hand on top of Sam’s head, ruffling his hair briefly. ‘You wanna work on the model some more?’ he asks.

Sam nods, gratitude welling up inside him. Dean makes coffee and they stay up until dawn, sitting across the kitchen table from each other, working silently on the half-finished craft model of the World War I Sopwith Camel that Dean got him for Christmas. He’d given Sam his present a week early. Sam still has Dean’s gift buried at the bottom of his backpack: a small, cheap, throwaway camera he bought at a gas station, for after they leave Bobby’s and Dean can’t play with the Pentax anymore.

The sun’s up in the sky when Bobby appears in the doorway, his long rifle propped on one shoulder like a woodsman’s ax. ‘You boys been up all night?’

‘Princess here couldn’t sleep,’ Dean grins, getting up and ruffling Sam’s hair again.

 

\--

 

‘Dean?’ Sam says a few nights later, looking across to the other bed. The threadbare motel carpet between the beds is lit with silver from the moonlight spilling in from the window.

‘Mm,’ Dean says, half-asleep. 

‘Look. It’s snowing.’

Dean makes a contented sound into his pillow, and Sam smiles to himself. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You wanna get a tree?’

‘No fucking way.’ Dean grumbles, the words slurred with impending sleep.

Sam laughs. ‘Why d’you always have to be such a Grinch, huh?’

‘Fine, okay, we’ll get a freakin’ tree in the morning. Now can I sleep?’

 

\--

 

They get a tiny plastic tree in the morning. Sam secretly prefers the artificial ones, never having liked the idea of cutting down a real tree. This one has a shiny silver star at the top, and Sam winds silver and red tinsel over its little branches.

Later, he straddles Dean’s shoulders to hang a set of colorful Buddhist flags from the ceiling. There are five flags on the streamer: yellow for earth, green for water, red for fire, white for clouds, and blue for sky. Sam’s had it since he was fourteen and Dean almost always makes a face when he brings it out, but the previous year, when Sam had forgotten to pull it down, Dean had been the one to fold it up carefully and slip it into Sam’s backpack.

He’s almost as tall as Dean now, but skinny enough to still fit easily on Dean’s shoulders. He fastens the flags to the ceiling with a strip of tape, letting the free end of the streamer swirl in the air.

He slides down Dean’s back and wraps his arms around Dean’s chest from behind, pressing close against him. ‘Thanks, Dean,’ he says, his mouth against Dean’s shoulder, and Dean allows it, his body still and warm and solid against Sam’s.

 

\--

 

It happens unexpectedly, like a rainstorm that arrives after a sultry day: the thing that drives them apart.

They’re deep in a wood, separated from Dad, being tailed by a wendigo. It’s a couple of weeks after Dean’s twentieth birthday, and while the biting harshness of winter has somewhat subsided, it’s still cold enough that Sam keenly feels the absence of their warm motel room. 

They’re almost weaponless; there was no time to grab all their gear when they’d awakened side-by-side to gunshots and Dad’s yell of ‘After it, boys!’

Dean had grabbed Sam by the front of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. While Dad fought the first wendigo, they’d chased after the second almost blindly, picking each other up when one of them stumbled, their movements uncoordinated, their limbs still heavy from sleep. Dean had his rifle with the homemade incendiary bullets. For a while it had seemed as though they would win, that they would torch the creature and triumphantly make their way back to camp, but then it had rounded on them, picking Sam up and throwing him bodily into a tree. Dean had managed to fire off a couple of rounds, and the creature had abandoned them, letting out a pained howl and disappearing into the trees.

‘Sam,’ Dean had said, dropping to his knees, terror in his voice.

 _I’m okay_ , Sam wanted to say, but his chest hurt and he couldn’t breathe, and his left leg was twisted brokenly. The last thing he’d remembered was Dean scooping him up into his arms, the wetness of his own involuntary tears against Dean’s neck as he was carried to safety.

 

\--

 

They’ve taken shelter in a cave. Sam’s leg is set, bound by strips of Dean’s undershirt. The pain is a little more manageable now, but not so much that he can contemplate standing. 

They’re arguing, Sam trying to convince Dean to go get help, and Dean refusing to leave him alone while the wendigos are still out there.

‘It’s not like my leg’s going to heal itself anytime soon,’ Sam points out, teeth gritted, shivering with the cold and the pain.

‘I know.’ Dean crouches beside him and wraps his own jacket around Sam’s shoulders for additional warmth. He puts an arm around Sam, and for a moment Sam expects to be pulled closer, but Dean’s only reaching around to get his hand into his jacket pocket. He withdraws it, clutching a packet of colored powder; they’d used it the previous night to draw the Anasazi sigils around the campsite. 

Sam watches as Dean draws the runes on the ground just inside the mouth of the cave. He finishes and comes back to Sam, drawing a protective circle of red around him, and then smearing the last of the powder over Sam’s forehead, his fingers pushing Sam’s hair out of the way and tracing a symbol there. Then he presses the rifle into Sam’s hands.

‘You need it more than I do,’ Sam says, trying to push it back, but Dean shakes his head.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘You see the son of a bitch, you don’t think, you fire. You got that, Sammy?’

Sam nods. ‘Don’t be too long,’ he says lightly, as if Dean’s only going out for a supply run.

‘Back before you know it,’ Dean promises, starting to get to his feet. 

_I might never see you again_. Sam grabs the cord around Dean’s neck and pulls him down, his mouth finding Dean’s in the semi-darkness of the cave, his body shaking against Dean’s. Still half-kneeling, Dean braces himself with his hands on Sam’s shoulders and lets Sam kiss him. He doesn’t kiss back.

Sam pulls back, his hand still clutching the amulet, terrified of Dean’s reaction. Dean’s expression is unreadable for a moment, and then he releases Sam’s shoulders after giving them a quick squeeze. ‘Stay awake, okay?’ Dean says, gently prying himself away from Sam’s grip.

Sam nods, clutching Dean’s flashlight tightly as he watches his brother leave.

 

\--

 

It’s three hours later when it finally dawns on Sam that Dean isn’t coming back. 

He startles awake as the rifle slips from his hands and clatters to the floor. The sun must be high in the sky outside, but inside the cave it’s still half-light. There’s a swishing sound from outside, and Sam doesn’t know if it’s the wind in the trees, or the wendigo coming back for him.

The realization falls into the pit of his stomach like a stone. The cave can’t be more than thirty minutes from the campsite, meaning that either Dean has lost his way—and he wouldn’t—or something has prevented him from coming back with help.

His bruised chest hurts almost more than his leg now, every breath a pained effort, any movement almost impossible. He dozes intermittently, dreaming of Dean coming back, of Dean strung up below the ground as food for the wendigos. _Don’t be dead_ , he thinks when he wakes. _Please don’t be dead._

The hours pass by. When the gathering darkness outside begins to spill into the cave, he puts on the flashlight. The last of his strength is slowly seeping out of him, dying with the batteries. _It wasn’t your fault_ , he thinks as he watches the weak flickers of the dying torch. Please never think it was your fault.

 

\--

 

He wakes two days later in a county hospital. There are tubes in his mouth and nose and he can’t speak, can’t ask for Dean. Then Dad’s hand is on his forehead, calming him down.

‘You’re okay,’ Dad says. ‘Dean’s okay. You’re both gonna be fine.’ There are tears of relief in his eyes, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Sam squeezes his hand in apology, and lets himself fall back into sleep.

 

\--

 

Dean stays unconscious for another day; it turns out that being thrown into a tree and going through exposure for over twenty hours isn’t as bad as being grabbed by a wendigo and taken to its lair.

Later, lying in a motel room with his leg in a splint, Sam thinks of their last photograph, the easy familiarity of it, and knows that there’s a border between them now, that they’ll ensure they’re never mistaken for each other again, knows that the coming years will only make things worse.

And so it happens, the thing that Sam hadn’t even known he’d been dreading until it was too late to stop it: separation from Dean in a way that he isn’t ready for, could never have been ready for. The thing that drives a wedge so deep between him and Dean that it seems they’d never had anything but distance between them. Dean doesn’t meet his eyes when they’re alone; indeed, he ensures there are very few occasions when they’re alone with each other. The few times Sam manages to corner him, Dean’s guilt spills over into the space between them like blood. He doesn’t say _I left you and no one knew where you were and you could have died and I’ll never forgive myself, even if you’ve forgiven me_ , but Sam can hear his thoughts as clearly as if Dean were screaming them out loud.

Sometimes, in the years that follow, years in which the kiss he’d dared to give Dean fades to a memory, Sam lies awake in the darkness and feels the absence of what they could have had, the unwritten story of what they’d left behind in those woods. He feels it staring at him when he looks into a mirror. It sits in an empty chair across the cafeteria table from him at Stanford, makes itself felt in the digits on the screen of his phone as he takes his thumb off the call button and presses cancel instead.

Dean is older than Sam’s memories, his past reaching beyond Sam’s into a space that Sam can’t share. He’s always known that. But he’s still the person Sam doesn’t have to explain his contexts to, the one who knows the chronology of Sam’s life without having to be told. The one who erased places on the shared map of their lives as though they’d never existed. 

After Dick Roman, Sam kills every Leviathan he can get his hands on. He’s lost Dean many times before, and Dean has lost him, but never like this, never when Sam didn’t know where Dean was, didn’t have a clue where to start looking. He lies awake and hears himself ask, _If you could live in any historical period, which would you pick?_ He turns his head on the pillow, and there’s no answer from the empty space beside him that isn’t Dean, that was never Dean.

 

\--


	2. Hana

‘Hana!’

She looks up from her book, instantly on the alert. ‘Is it him again?’

The orderly nods. She puts her book facedown on the desk—no time to insert the bookmark, not now—and runs down the corridor to her patient.

He’s thrashing in his bed, his body fighting its restraints even though he remains unconscious. More than once, she’s wished she could see inside his head, find out what thoughts haunt his mind so badly, even in sleep. 

She slides a needle into a vein on his left arm, presses the plunger. He sinks back into slumber, his limbs growing heavy.

‘It’s okay,’ she murmurs, smoothing his hair back. ‘It’s all right.’

 

\--

 

The clinic is quiet at this time of night, the patients mostly sedated, the stillness giving the impression of peace. It’s not exactly genuine, but she’ll take it.

As always, the buzzer next to her desk rings, softly and apologetically, around two in the morning. She slides her feet into her sandals, closes her book around a finger to mark the place, and walks down the gently lit corridor to his room.

‘Hey,’ she says from the door.

‘Sorry,’ he says, as always. ‘I’m so sorry.’ 

‘There’s no need to apologize,’ she says. ‘Would you like to continue?’

‘Please,’ he says, and she settles into the chair beside his bed, opens the book, and begins to read.

 

\--

 

He’s always most alert in the mornings, most _himself_ , although how Hana knows, she can’t really tell; after all, she has no idea who he is when he’s himself. After breakfast, they take a walk around the garden for a while before her shift ends and she goes home to sleep.

She’d heard his voice for the first time on the sixth day that she’d been there. He’d said nothing for the first five days, and what she knew about him she’d had to learn from some of the other staff: he’d been a patient for three weeks, had checked himself in with no possessions except for a worn duffel that carried a few clothes and a laptop that he used every day. His diagnosis was vague; the only prominent symptom of his illness were the nightmares he clearly suffered from every night, often having to be restrained to prevent him from hurting himself as he spasmed in his sleep. The only other person he communicated with on an almost daily basis was a young woman who had been brought in with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Hana had never heard them talking, but they would spend at least an hour every evening playing chess in Amelia’s room, their dark heads bent over the board. 

For the first couple of days, Hana had tried making small talk, commenting on what a nice day it was, would he like some more orange juice, and hey, wasn’t it sweet the way that cat was sunning itself on the wall over there? He’d responded with gestures and half-smiles, always polite, and she’d stopped talking when she’d realized how exhausted he was, how painful it was for him to gather the energy to come up with his non-verbal responses.

‘You can talk, you know,’ he’d said on day six, his voice soft and hoarse. They were sitting under a tree that she could tell he liked; he always chose that particular bench to sit on during their walk around the garden.

‘I wasn’t sure if it bothered you,’ she confessed.

‘It doesn’t,’ he said, turning his head to smile, and the briefest hint of dimples appeared in his cheeks.

‘Mr Wesson,’ she began.

‘Sam.’ 

‘Sam,’ she said, giving him her warmest smile. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound too clinical, but I’d really like to know more about your case. I’d like to help you, if I can.’

‘You already are,’ he said, and leaned down to scratch the cat behind her ears. He didn’t say any more that day.

 

\--

 

It’s been four weeks now, and she’s just finished her first month at the clinic.

‘Happy anniversary,’ Sam says when she visits him that evening. He hands her a homemade card: a piece of folded paper with a drawing of a flamingo on the outside.

‘You remembered,’ she says, almost shocked. They’d only been exchanging words for a week when she’d briefly mentioned, in passing, that it was her favorite animal. (Sam’s were dogs.)

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. ‘I’m good at remembering things,’ he says simply, no hint of pride in his voice, and the shadows under his eyes seem darker.

She suppresses a shiver, and looks down at the drawing in her hands. ‘This is really amazing.’

‘It could be better,’ he says, again in that matter-of-fact tone. ‘I didn’t have any charcoal, only a pencil.’

‘Would you like some?’

He looks up, and seems almost pleased for a moment. ‘If it’s no trouble.’

After that day, he spends more time out in the garden, and she often leaves him under a tree, still sketching, as she waves goodbye before she leaves for the day. He doesn’t offer to show her his sketches, and she doesn’t ask, sensing that it would be more than a violation of his privacy. Sometimes, she catches involuntary glimpses of what he’s sketching: a landscape reflected in the oval of a rear-view mirror; a dog with shaggy dark hair; a pendant that looks like some sort of horned pagan god.

‘Do you draw?’ he asks one morning, without looking up from his sketch. His hand moves deftly over the paper, making long, steady strokes.

‘No. I used to love taking photographs, though.’

His hand stills, and he looks up at her, deliberately breaking his own concentration. ‘You don’t anymore?’

‘It’s not that,’ she says, too quickly. ‘I... lost someone. It wasn’t the same afterwards.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. It’s soft and simple, but out of all the condolences she’s heard, it’s probably the most genuine.

‘You lost someone too, didn’t you?’ she says, emboldened by his sympathy.

He winces as though she’d pulled back her hand to strike him.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she blabbers. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s all right.’ His eyes are fixed on his sketch book, his hands flat on the paper. 

He says nothing else for several minutes. It’s long past the time that she usually leaves for home, and sleep is threatening to cloud her eyes, but she stays still beside him, waiting.

‘I’m trying my best,’ he says then. ‘But sometimes I don’t think it’ll be enough.’

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asks. The words sound baseless to her, ridiculous even, but he gives her a small smile.

‘You could get me some paint,’ he says. 

 

\--

 

She returns from a three-day break to find that Sam hasn’t stepped outside for over seventy-two hours, and that his room has been transformed into a garden of paint.

There are dark green creepers around the window panes, snaking up to the ceiling. Tortuous roots are draped over the floor, their textures gnarled and ancient, like the illustrations she remembers from the books she’d loved as a child. A broad-leafed canopy stretches over the ceiling, thin white veins threaded among the summery greens.

‘This is beautiful,’ she says quietly, so as not to startle the two patients. For once, they aren’t hunched over the chess board. Amelia is on the floor, leaning back against one of the tree trunks as though she were at a picnic, a half-smile on her lips, her eyes far away. It’s the first time Hana has seen her in a room that isn’t her own.

‘We needed a garden,’ Sam says. He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, a heavy book cradled in his lap.

‘A garden without any flowers?’ she asks.

He looks around at his work, seeming startled. ‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Any more bad nights while I was away?’

He shakes his head.

‘You haven’t slept, have you? That’s why you haven’t had any nightmares.’

He shrugs, and retreats into silence.

 

\--

 

Over time, Hana comes to think of Sam as her despairing saint. 

Even a cursory look at him—the tenseness that never goes away from the line of his shoulders, the smudges under his eyes, the lines on his forehead—can reveal that he’s carrying a burden. Perhaps a secret more than a burden, an unspoken weight, or a burden that’s also a secret. Something hidden, something only he—and perhaps the person he’s lost—can understand.

‘May I?’ she asks one morning, gesturing toward his sketchbook.

He hesitates for a moment, and then opens the book to a particular drawing and pushes it toward her.

It’s a picture of him leaning against a shiny black car, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s much younger, his hair shorter, but still long enough to fall into his eyes. There’s an arm around him, fingers curling familiarly over his shoulder. He hasn’t yet drawn the person the arm belongs to, and yet the drawing doesn’t seem unfinished.

‘You’ve loved him for a very long time,’ she says, surprising herself. 

‘All my life,’ he says. She thinks she knows the feeling.

 

\--

 

Amelia is as much of an enigma as Sam Wesson, if not more. There are times when Hana feels like an intruder even as she watches Amelia from afar. She has a private gaze, so piercing in its intensity that to be the focus of those eyes makes Hana feel as though she were being stripped bare.

Unlike Sam, Amelia doesn’t draw, but on the desk in her room are sheaves and sheaves of paper with an unknown language on it, slightly resembling the Japanese script. Hana doesn’t dare take a closer look.

‘Let me help you,’ she says one night, sitting by Amelia as she rocks back and forth on the floor of her room, arms wrapped around her knees, her face calm and focused.

Amelia looks up, offering Hana a glance that’s somehow scornful and sympathetic at once. She reaches over and deliberately sweeps the chessboard to the floor, the game over before it can be finished.

When Hana bends over to retrieve the pieces, Amelia’s hand closes around her wrist. ‘Leave them,’ she says, her thumb against Hana’s pulse-point. ‘Please.’ Her eyes are fixed on the scattered pieces, as though analyzing a pattern in them that only she can see.

 

\--

 

‘It’s okay,’ Sam says as Hana knocks on his open door that evening. ‘I know you know.’ He gestures to the test report in her hands.

‘You did this to yourself,’ she says. 

‘Not all of it,’ Sam says, glancing up guiltily. ‘I was already having nightmares. I just... took something to make them worse.’

‘Why?’ she asks, helpless, angry. ‘Why would you do that?’

Sam doesn’t answer, but his gaze flickers to the painted trees on the wall.

‘Amelia.’ She doesn’t realize she knows until she says the name aloud. ‘It was the only way you could be close to her. If you were a patient here. It was always about Amelia.’

‘I don’t think she’s schizophrenic,’ Sam says. ‘And I think it’s safe to tell you that.’

‘Safe?’ There’s a discomfiting prickling at the back of her neck, the kind she sometimes gets when Sam says something unexpected, something that suggests that whatever she knows about him doesn’t even skim the surface of who he is.

‘I think she’s a... I think she’s special,’ Sam says. ‘In a way that might make someone want to hurt her. And I can’t stay here much longer, Hana. Will you look after her after I leave?’

‘Of course I will. It’s my job. But I don’t understand this. Any of it.’ Hana gets to her feet, starts to turn away from Sam.

‘She’ll explain, if you give her time,’ Sam says quickly. ‘She’ll talk to you.’ He smiles. ‘She likes you.’

Hana flushes, and Sam’s smile widens into a grin, his face all dimples and shining eyes.

He’s gone when Hana comes in the next evening, no trace that he’d ever been there except for the garden on the wall. That night, she helps Amelia move into Sam’s room, the cat leading the way, tail held high, purrs resounding in the quiet corridor.

 

\--


	3. Dean

It’s always half-light in Purgatory. The lack of boundaries between day and night is liberating in a way, because he doesn’t have to stop and think about where to spend the night, whether to sleep. There’s no need for routines, no need to worry about meals that have names. There’s no compulsion to count the days, no need to think about how much time has passed since he left Sam.

He’s been tracking a wendigo for several hours now. The last time he’d run into one, Sam had been with him. And the _first_ time they’d run into one... For years after, Dean hadn’t known whether to be sorry or glad about the incident. Sorry because Sam almost died, injured and suffering from exposure, because Dean had left him where no one else knew to find him. He’d almost died alone in a cave in the dark because Dean had fucked up.

And then there was the kiss. Sam had kissed him, so full of desperation and want that Dean hadn’t been able to refuse him, push him away as he should have. He’d known even then that it was a fork in the road, a point from which everything could diverge in opposing directions depending on what Dean did next. So he’d shut Sam off, because shutting him off and forcing him down one road while Dean himself took the other was best for Sam.

And now there’s a wendigo again. Dean doesn’t care if it’s one of the wendigos he’s encountered before, or not; he’s going to kill it anyway. The thing about Purgatory is that every violent act is justified, every killing simple, clean. Not like Madison, not like Amy Pond, not like his own goddamned Amazon daughter.

 

\--

 

Taking care of the wendigo is pathetically easy; the machete he has is more than a match for the inhabitants of Purgatory. ‘You see that?’ he says to no one in particular, wiping the black blood off his blade with a handful of leaves. He hasn’t needed anyone fighting beside him this last year, not since Cas ditched him. No ally to depend on, exacerbating his weaknesses. No little brother to worry about. Just him against the bad guys.

It feels like shit.

The need to sleep begins to prickle at his eyelids. He finds a cave and beds down for a while.

 

\--

 

The dream’s the same as always. He walks into a clearing in the trees, where a young woman with dark curls sits beside a campfire. The flames keep the darkness at bay. There’s a blackness to the air that he never really sees in the gray light of Purgatory. In the dream, it’s night again, the kind of darkness he hasn’t seen in a year.

‘The gambit is never an easy decision,’ she’s saying as he sits down on a log across the fire from her. 

He sits quietly, watching her watching the fire. Waiting for more news, as he always does.

‘He’s close,’ she says. She has a loose-leafed book in her lap, her fingers absently turning the thin pages.

‘Who?’ he asks. As always, she doesn’t answer, doesn’t even indicate that she knows he’s there.

‘Which piece do you sacrifice?’ she asks, lifting a sheet of paper in her hands, jostling the book off her lap. ‘The brave knight? Strength and speed? The bishop? Power, responsibility? The queen?’

He’s holding his breath and he doesn’t even know why. ‘What does the queen stand for?’ he asks, knowing there won’t be a reply.

She smiles to herself, leaning forward and letting the page float down into the fire. It has a sketch on it, a face drawn from charcoal, stunningly lifelike. 

‘No!’ He leaps to his feet, throws himself to his knees beside the fire, but the flames are already spreading, blackening the soft paper until there’s nothing left but ash, crackling orange and black.

 

\--

 

It’s a few days before he realizes he’s on his way somewhere, that he’s been unconsciously following the stream he drinks from. Thirst doesn’t feel the same in Purgatory, and he’s not even sure he needs to drink; the water just feels good after a kill, trickling cool and clear down his throat as he drinks from his cupped hands. 

The terrain is changing, albeit subtly. The leaves are the tiniest bit greener here, the ground a little more brown, the differences between day and night a little more pronounced. 

 

\--

 

The woman is sitting cross-legged by the fire again. It’s not completely dark this time, the air that orangey-gray it gets just before sundown. The flames are small, and Dean’s not sure if the fire’s dying out, or if it’s just been lit.

This time, instead of a book, there’s a stone tablet in her hands.

‘...a place of transition,’ she’s saying softly as Dean sits down, not making any noise, even though he’s reasonably sure she can’t hear him.

‘A place that tests your mettle,’ she says. ‘A year of challenges. Of playing the game until there’s nothing left but the game.’

‘You talking about Purgatory?’ he asks.

She looks down at the tablet, her fingers tracing the inscriptions. ‘This is the part that hurts,’ she says.

Dean wakes up.

 

\--

 

He wakes up, almost expecting to see something looming over him, going for his throat, but there’s nothing, just the ever-present sound of trickling water and a half-dead wind rustling through the trees.

He kneels by the stream and splashes water on to his face, washing the sleep from his eyes, and then begins to walk again.

He hasn’t gone more than ten feet when there’s a sharp whistling sound, a burning scrape against his face as an arrow grazes it.

He’s surrounded. The arrow was merely a warning shot; they could’ve taken him out, had they wanted to.

Someone kicks him in the back of his knee. He twists as he falls, stabbing backward with his blade, feeling it sink into flesh. Blood streams from the knife on to his fingers, warm and sticky. He swings his arm back in the opposite direction without a pause, dragging the blade out of his victim and slashing it through the air in a half-arc, slicing the head off the half-human, fanged creature in front of him.

A lasso made of vines is thrown over his torso, pulled taut, cutting into his arms. He slashes at it with his blade, picks himself up and runs. Too many to fight this time, but he’ll be back to even the score another day.

Sleep comes easily that night.

 

\--

 

This time, for the first time, he doesn’t pause on the other side of the fire. He walks across to her side, sits down a couple of feet away.

She’s leafing through the book again, smiling a little. ‘You’re so good,’ she says, half-glancing over her shoulder, as if she’s talking to someone. ‘These are so good.’

Dean shifts a little closer, looks down at the sketches in the book. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asks. He puts a hand on her shoulder, shaking her a little. ‘Tell me.’

She stands, the book falling from her lap, turns away from him. He feels her fingertips brush lightly across the top of his head, or maybe it’s just the breeze.

He glances down at the book, and his own face stares back at him. He’s bending over the hood of the Impala, head turned sideways, smiling. There’s a rag in one hand, a tin of polish on the hood beside him. He’s wearing a dark t-shirt that clings to him, sunlight glinting off the pendant in the center of his chest.

 

\--

 

‘Sam,’ Dean says, struggling awake. ‘Sam.’ He turns his head to the side as he’s done a thousand times before, a million times, turning to the bed beside his own, checking that Sam was safely asleep, in rooms where people thought they’d checked in to fuck, in rooms in which they never touched unless one of them was hurt and needed patching up. Sam had never asked for anything more again, not since that day in the woods.

He doesn’t kill anything for several hours, deliberately staying off the track as he follows the stream by its sound, keeping to the shade and ducking out of sight whenever the wind carries voices to him.

The stream is broadening into a little river now, the sound of the moving water stronger. He picks up his pace, intent on covering more ground before nightfall.

There are no caves now, nothing but trees and flat ground around him as far as the eye can see. There are two more kills before sleep, a deeper-than-usual gash in his side that he cleans up with water before collapsing under a bush, only half-concealed.

 

\--

 

He walks into the clearing in his dream, already knowing whom he’ll find there. He’s not entirely sure how he knows, just that the certainty of dreams is never mirrored during wakefulness. The edges of his vision are a little blurred, the woods looking less like the ones in Purgatory and more like something in a half-developed photograph.

‘Dean,’ Sam says. He looks about sixteen. He’s wearing Dean’s faded old Led Zep t-shirt, his long fringe falling into his eyes.

Dean walks up to him, brushes the strands of hair out of Sam’s eyes, thumbs the wetness from his cheeks. ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘I’m here. I’m here, Sammy.’

Sam grasps Dean’s wrists and pulls Dean’s hands away from his face. ‘No,’ he says, fingers squeezing painfully tight around Dean’s wrists. ‘You don’t get to touch me.’

Dean steps closer, trapped hands brushing against the denim over Sam’s hips.

‘No,’ Sam says again, his voice barely louder than the crackling of the small fire. Dean bends his head, his lips finding the soft skin above Sam’s collarbone. 

 

\--

 

Sharp teeth clamp around his ankle, pain and blood tearing him out of the dream. He’s already swinging his blade as he comes awake, jerking his foot uselessly against the creature’s hold. He hardly recognizes the sounds pulled from his own throat as he slashes the creature to pieces, leaving its mangled form on the ground as he limps away, its red eyes still gleaming dully, like something out of the B-grade sci-fi flicks he and Sam had laughed over in darkened theaters, their hands dipping into the same giant tub of popcorn.

His boot’s saved his foot from the worst of the attack, the skin broken and bleeding but the bones still intact. He washes the blood away, the feel of warm skin still against his lips. Nervous excitement thrums through him for the rest of the day, his footsteps quickening in anticipation of the need to sleep.

 

\--

 

‘Sorry about last night,’ Sam says. He’s sitting cross-legged on the ground, still sixteen, the orange light from the campfire further softening his features.

Dean shakes his head, not taking his eyes off Sam, drinking in the sight of him. ‘No, Sammy. I’m the one who fucked up. It’s always been me.’

Sam holds out a hand, fingers curled in invitation. Dean takes it, letting his fingers slip between Sam’s. Sam tugs him forward and Dean sits down beside him, his free hand reaching up to smooth back Sam’s hair, fingertips trailing over his hairline and down his cheek.

Sam takes a breath like he’s repressing a shiver. ‘Knew you felt it too,’ he says, his voice soft, aching. ‘I’ve always known.’ He leans forward, his face in Dean’s neck. 

‘Time and place, Sammy,’ Dean says, but he slides an arm around Sam, keeps him close. ‘Can’t take it, Sam. Can’t fucking take this shit anymore,’ he says, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck. 

They stay that way, pressed close against each other, saying nothing more, until Dean wakes up.

 

\--

 

He’s stronger now, his reflexes better than they’ve ever been after a year of combat. There’s no hunger, no need to hunt for food, making him the perfect killing machine. No weaknesses except for the need to sleep, and he suspects that it’s more because of his need to dream than because of a need for rest.

The worst decision he’s had to make during his journey comes when he reaches a fork in the river. It splits neatly into two streams along the ground, one continuing in the same direction as before, and the other dipping along a slope in the ground and curving out of his line of sight.

_Give me a sign. Anything. Come on._

His instinct tells him nothing. He takes the track beside the stream that’s still on level ground, continuing in the same direction he’s come from.

He doesn’t dream that night.

 

\--

 

‘Fuck,’ Dean says as he wakes up. The air’s stale around him even though there’s no cover, thick and smelling faintly sweet, like death. He doesn’t touch the water, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his dry hands as he retraces his steps.

He fights three vampires before he gets to his destination. It’s almost good, for once, to fight something with a human face, a human voice. To hear words, even though they’re taunts. He kills two and maims the third, twisting the man’s leg backward until it snaps beneath his grip, leaving him screaming under the trees as he sets off again with a fresh wound, holes in his forearm from teeth that managed to sink in before he could get in a killing blow.

He reaches the point where the smaller tributary starts, and begins following it downhill. The ground descends steadily, getting damper, slushier, fewer trees around him, more rocks, the colors more muted than before.

The river begins descending sharply with the ground, walls rising around him, the path ahead shaping itself into a V. It veers into a tunnel, dark and faintly damp. Thunder sounds in the sky. He beds down in the mouth of the tunnel for the night, using a mossy rock for a pillow. ‘C’mon, Sammy,’ he says before he falls into sleep, a fierce rush of longing driving him forward into blackness.

 

\--

 

Sam’s sitting with his back against the log, one leg stretched out in front of him. He’s shivering, even though he’s wearing his jacket and has another one draped around his shoulders.

‘What happened to you?’ Dean asks, urgent, frightened, dropping to his knees beside Sam. He pushes Sam’s hair away from his forehead and sees a symbol drawn there, an Anasazi sign smeared on to Sam’s skin with red powder.

‘If you could live in any time period,’ Sam murmurs, slumping against Dean, ‘which would you pick?’

‘Why this?’ Dean asks, letting Sam cling to him. ‘Why now?’

‘’m gonna die,’ Sam says into Dean’s chest. ‘You aren’t coming back. Wasn’t your fault. Please never think it was your fault.’

‘You’re not gonna die, Sammy. You hear me? You gotta stay with me, baby.’ Dean’s frantic, terrified, but Sam’s not listening anymore, his eyes closed, his hands curled insensibly into Dean’s shirt.

‘Please, no,’ Dean whispers, his vision blurred, his face wet, Sam still and limp against him.

 

\--

 

He wakes up shaking. His face is wet with rain, spilling into the mouth of the tunnel from the cloudy sky.

‘Dean,’ a familiar voice says, and he lifts his head.

‘Cas?’

‘Time to wake up,’ Castiel says, smiling serenely. He’s sitting with his back against the opposite wall, his hand dipping into the stream, playing with the water.

‘Fuck, Cas, where’ve you been?’

Cas shrugs. ‘This is your Purgatory, Dean. Not mine.’

‘For once in this freaking place,’ Dean says viciously, ‘I wish people would stop talking in freaking riddles and just give me a straight answer.’

‘What were you dreaming about?’ Cas asks. ‘You seemed... distressed.’

Dean draws in a long breath, leans back against the wall. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I thought... Never mind that. What did you mean, my Purgatory?’

‘Heaven, Hell, Purgatory.’ Cas gestures with his hands like a professor in a classroom. ‘They’re all spaces in your mind, Dean. You had your Heaven, your Hell, and this is your Purgatory. A place of transition. You aren’t meant to stay here.’

‘A place that tests your mettle,’ Dean says, remembering the woman’s words. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that before.’ 

Cas beams. ‘And I always thought Sam was the smart one.’

Sam’s name stings like a blow, Dean’s heart too raw from the dream. ‘Cut the crap, Cas. Is there a way out?’

Cas gestures toward the tunnel. ‘You seem to have found your way to a special place, Dean. Think of it as Purgatory’s common room, if you will. The place where things collide.’

‘Damn it, Cas, I am one step away from losing it. I haven’t seen you in a year, and now you suddenly appear like some fucking hermit in a cave. You gonna give me a straight answer, or not?’

‘All I can tell you,’ Cas says, getting to his feet, ‘is that you’re on the right path. But I’m not the person who can get you out, Dean.’

‘Yeah?’ Dean says. ‘So who is?’

‘I think you already know the answer to that,’ Cas says. He inclines his head toward the tunnel. ‘You should get going.’

‘You’re not coming?’

Cas smiles. ‘I’ll see you on the other side.’

 

\--

 

He follows the rough path in the near darkness, the roof of the tunnel so low in some places that he has to bend to get through, his stomach churning at the thought of being trapped in the claustrophobically narrow space. 

The stream is almost filling the entire path now, its water rushing loudly, wilder and faster than it had been outside, forcing him to wade through it, digging his boots into its soft bed to keep his footing. The ground’s getting softer, almost sucking his feet in, and at times his foot goes through and gets trapped for a moment in the slush before he can pull himself free.

The water’s waist-deep when the current gets stronger and he can no longer fight it. His foot is stuck again, and when he tries to pull it free, his boot gets left behind. He thinks of Sam saying _I lost my shoe_ and lets out a panicked laugh that rings hollowly around him. He starts to swim, even though the current’s so strong now that it’s pulling him along, forcing him to try to stay afloat, keep his head above the water, keep breathing.

He thinks of the woman by the fire. _Which piece will you sacrifice?_ He made his sacrifice a long time ago, has nothing left to give up now.

The current sucks him under. He pushes up toward the surface, breaks above it, gasps in a breath before he’s sucked under again.

The river pulls him forward, spilling into a cavern, transforming into a plunging waterfall, throwing him into the dark, rushing water below.

‘Dean!’ The most welcome sound he’s ever heard, clear and strong despite the rushing water, a figure standing at the edge of the bank, several meters away. ‘Dean, come on! You’re almost there!’

He strikes out for the bank, his lungs burning, screaming for air, the water freezing now, getting into his mouth and making him gasp. He doesn’t stop. _Almost there._

The current throws him against the bank. It’s too high for him to climb, the water alternately trying to suck him back in and slamming him against the cold stone. His head’s below the water again, his vision going black from the darkness and the lack of air. The quietness beneath the water is almost serene, no evidence of how wildly the water is churning above his head. 

He reaches up with one arm, his fingers slicing through the frigid air, desperately scraping against the cold wall of stone, unable to find anything to hold on to. His body gives up, his mouth opening with a gasp, water flooding into his nose, his lungs. His hand claws at the bank, his body thrashing against the sucking pull of the water. A hand closes around his wrist.

 

\--

 

‘Dean. Come on, please. Please.’

A hand is clamped against his face, another hand rubbing his soaking wet chest. Dean blinks his eyes open. ‘Sam?’

‘Thank god,’ Sam says. ‘Thank god.’ 

Dean grips the front of Sam’s jacket and pulls himself up to a sitting position. ‘Where the fuck are we?’ he asks, looking around. He’s still in the cavern beside the river, but on the other side now, and Sam’s there. Sam’s there.

‘I opened a portal,’ Sam says. ‘Used a spell. But I couldn’t—Dean, I couldn’t get past the river. I had to wait for you to get here.’ He wraps an arm around Dean’s shoulders, supporting Dean’s weight as he leans back against Sam.

Dean can still hear the sound of rushing water. Beside them is a way out through the cavern, sunlight spilling in like blessed relief.

 

\--

 

There’s a wet tongue lapping against his face. ‘Gerroff,’ Dean says, still mostly asleep, pushing with a hand.

‘Riot, stop that,’ Sam says from somewhere, and the dog withdraws. Dean props himself up on an elbow.

‘Sorry about that,’ Sam says, not looking sorry at all.

Dean drops his head back against the pillow, turns his head as Sam comes to sit at the edge of the bed.

‘You okay?’ Sam asks. ‘You’ve been out for hours.’

Dean looks up at him. ‘Your hair’s longer,’ he says.

Sam flushes a bit. ‘Um, yeah. How come yours isn’t?’

Dean yawns, sitting up. ‘I dunno. Never grew a beard either. It’s like time wasn’t functioning there, or something.’

Sam watches him silently for a moment, and Dean watches him back. Sam’s hair is soft and shiny around his face, his well-defined arms outlined by the close-fitting gray t-shirt he’s wearing. There are soft smudges under his eyes, like shadows. The sheets are warm and soft under Dean, around him. His fingers brush against the hem of the blanket pooled around his waist, follow the fabric to where Sam’s hand rests against the edge of it. He touches Sam’s skin, afraid that it will feel cold and clammy like it had the last time he’d touched Sam in his dreams. But Sam is warm, alive. He turns his hand beneath Dean’s, links their fingers together and squeezes once before their hands pull apart, both of them self-conscious, too aware of the moment.

Sam shifts away, gets to his feet. ‘You hungry?’ he asks, bending to scratch his dog behind his ears, as if to give his hands something to do.

‘Starving.’ Dean picks up a pillow and smacks Sam in the face with it. ‘Go get me some food, bitch.’

Sam gives him a startled laugh, tugs the pillow from Dean’s hands and doesn’t even call him a jerk.

 

\--

 

‘She was a what now?’ Dean asks, mouth full of pizza. It’s strange to feel hunger again, the texture of food unfamiliar to his senses. He’s sitting by the window in Sam’s living room, his hair still shower-damp, warming himself in the sunlight.

‘A prophet,’ Sam says. ‘At least I think she was. But a badly messed-up one, Dean. When she spoke, it was in riddles. I think maybe the visions she’d seen had affected her mind so badly that she was barely able to communicate with anyone.’

‘This prophet of yours,’ Dean asks. ‘She have wavy dark hair? Pretty, late twenties? Kinda hung up on chess?’

Sam blinks in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

‘I think I might’ve seen her.’

‘In Purgatory?’ Sam says, startled.

‘Not exactly, but yeah. I had these weird dreams.’

‘She’d seen some of those tablets, Dean. Those so-called words of God, like the one Dick Roman found. She’d seen one about Purgatory. Took me months to learn to communicate with her, find out what she knew, and even then...’ Sam looks down at his hands. ‘Even then, I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure, but I had to try.’

‘You said she told you only you could get me out?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Sam says, squirming a little. ‘But yeah. Because we share a Heaven, apparently, and so...’

‘The soulmate thing. I get it,’ Dean says, a little too sharply. 

Sam looks away, stung. ‘Well, anyway. I guess that’s why Cas couldn’t help you.’ He gets to his feet, still not looking at Dean. ‘I should let you rest. I’ll take Riot out, give you some space.’

Dean doesn’t respond, chewing resolutely on his pizza until the door clicks quietly shut behind Sam and his dog.

 

\--

 

Twenty minutes later, when Sam still hasn’t returned, Dean steps out on to the porch.

The university campus is still and quiet in the afternoon, its colors brighter than Dean’s accustomed to: the sky a vivid blue, the shrubs along Sam’s driveway bursting with reds and pinks. It’s a community college, not some fancy school; Sam had mentioned that he’d had to fake his credentials to get a job there, to support himself while he did his research about Purgatory and found a source that led him to Amelia. He imagines Sam wearing glasses and a tie, teaching in a classroom full of students, and the thought makes him smile. Sam would look good, look like he belonged there.

Right now, standing on Sam’s porch and squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight, Dean knows he’s the one who’s out of place, who doesn’t belong. The real world feels like drowning in technicolor, his body an image in grayscale, a dark, undefined smudge in a landscape painted with colors he no longer knows.

 

\--

 

‘I took a break from here while I was at the clinic,’ Sam says at dinner that night, scooping some more macaroni and cheese on to Dean’s plate. ‘They kept the place for me.’

‘You planning to stick around?’ Dean asks, taking another bite of his food.

Sam scrubs a hand over his face. His own food is barely touched. ‘I dunno, Dean. I wasn’t exactly thinking long-term, you know?’ He stabs at a piece of carrot on his plate. ‘All I could think about was getting you out.’

‘Did you ever—you didn’t dream about me, did you?’ Dean asks.

Sam looks up, startled enough that he meets Dean’s gaze. ‘I—why do you ask?’

Dean shrugs. ‘I dunno. Forget it.’

‘No, I—I did dream about you. Not bad dreams, like I had when you were in Hell. Just... stuff.’

‘Such as?’

‘Stuff that... stuff that didn’t really happen. Like... like once, I dreamt I fell into the Pit with you. In Stull Cemetery. That was a recurring one. We just kept falling, never hit the ground. I’d try to grab your hand, but I’d always wake up before I could get to you. I’d wake up and wonder if you’d found your way to Heaven, think of how easy it would be to join you there.’ He shrugs. ‘If they’d let me in again.’

Dean suppresses a shudder. ‘Fuck, Sam. Don’t talk like that.’

‘It’s all I thought about, Dean. For months. I knew you weren’t in Hell. Crowley had no reason to lie. If you’d been there, he’d probably have happily gloated about it.’

‘You went to Crowley?’ Dean asks sharply. ‘Sam, what were you thinking?’

Sam barks out a laugh. ‘Who else was I supposed to go to? I had no leads, nothing. Not on you or Cas, not on Kevin.’ He looks up at Dean, not even pretending to eat anymore. ‘What happened to you, Dean? What was so bad that you can’t even talk about it?’

Dean scrubs a hand over his face. ‘You trust me, right, Sammy?’

Sam frowns. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with—’

‘Trust me when I say I’m not going to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about.’ Dean gets to his feet, pushing his chair back. 

Sam follows him into the living room. ‘Real mature, walking away from a conversation,’ he says.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ Dean says, shaking his head. ‘I should go.’ He can always get back into hunting; it’s the one thing he still knows how to do, and now he knows how to hunt alone, counting on no one to watch his back. He doesn’t turn around to look at Sam, but he hears the sharp intake of breath. 

‘I let you go away now, am I ever gonna see you again?’ Sam asks.

Dean turns around. ‘You really think I’d do that? Cut you off?’

Sam shrugs. ‘You’re pretty good at it,’ he says.

Dean slams a hand against the wall, fingers clenched into a fist. ‘Damn you, Sam.’

‘You don’t have to damn me,’ Sam snaps back. ‘I’m already cursed.’ He laughs, soft and bitter, and goes back into the kitchen.

‘Don’t you walk away,’ Dean says, following him.

Sam’s got both his hands clamped on the back of a chair. ‘If you don’t leave, I’m going to hit you.’

‘Yeah?’ Dean holds out his arms. ‘Take your best shot, Sammy.’

‘Don’t fucking call me that,’ Sam hisses, swinging around, his eyes wild.

Dean dodges the punch easily, ducking under Sam’s arm and using the momentum to launch himself at Sam and bring him to the floor. But Sam, for all his lack of control at the moment, is still a giant. He flips them both over, pinning Dean to the floor. ‘You were saying?’ he asks, grabbing Dean’s wrists and forcing them above his head.

‘I could knee you in the balls, but I wouldn’t wanna hurt my kid brother,’ Dean says, panting for breath.

‘You could try,’ Sam says, his hair falling over both their faces. Still holding Dean immobile, he drops his forehead to Dean’s shoulder, takes a shuddering breath. ‘Fuck, Dean.’ He sounds like he does when he’s in pain, and Dean wriggles under him, suddenly desperate to make Sam stop hurting.

He tugs at Sam’s hold on his wrists. ‘Let me go.’ He turns his head, nosing against Sam’s hair. ‘Come on, kiddo. Let go.’

Sam lets go, sliding his hands down Dean’s arms, curling his fingers into the front of Dean’s jacket, his nose still buried in the curve of Dean’s neck. He’s all but crushing Dean, but Dean wouldn’t want to move even if he could. He cradles the back of Sam’s head with his hands, presses his mouth to Sam’s temple. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says into Sam’s hair, pressing another kiss against the side of his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Sammy.’

Sam lets out a muffled half-laugh, half-sob. ‘What’re you saying sorry for?’ 

‘Look at me and I’ll tell you,’ Dean says, nudging Sam’s face with his own.

Sam lifts his head. His eyes are bright and terrified.

Dean cups his face, his thumbs outlining Sam’s cheekbones. ‘You were a lot braver when you were sixteen,’ he says.

‘Yeah, well, I thought I was gonna die.’ Sam’s cheeks are flushed, and he’s not meeting Dean’s eyes.

Dean groans out a laugh. ‘You were also much smaller.’ He reaches up, tucks a strand of hair behind Sam’s ear. ‘I fucked you up, didn’t I, Sam. Without even trying. I fucked up while trying not to fuck up.’

Sam leans into Dean’s hand for a moment. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’d have fucked up just fine without your help.’

Dean smiles a little. ‘God, we’re a sorry pair of sons of bitches, aren’t we.’

Sam croaks out a laugh. ‘Totally.’ 

Cupping the back of Sam’s head, Dean brushes his lips over Sam’s forehead. Another quick kiss on his temple, and Sam makes a small sound.

‘Couldn’t fuck you up,’ Dean says, his forehead against Sam’s. ‘Not like that, Sammy. Not when you were sixteen. Christ, you were just a baby. You deserved better. You still do.’ He drags his mouth over Sam’s cheek, his jaw, his throat.

Sam lets out a choked sound. ‘Stop talking,’ he says. ‘Just shut the fuck up, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Dean says, his voice barely a whisper. Their lips are so close that he’s practically talking into Sam’s mouth now, and it should be no effort at all to do this.

Sam says his name, more a whimper than an actual word, sounding almost like he’s in pain again. Dean gets his act together, tilts his head and moves his mouth over Sam’s. Sam presses down against him like he’s aching for it, their lips parting at the same time. Dean keeps his hand in Sam’s hair and draws his other arm around Sam, holding him in place like he’ll disappear if Dean lets go of him. Sam is a warm, heavy, living weight on top of him, the taste of his mouth like remembering something half-forgotten, flooding Dean’s senses with memory, with colors that are bright as firecrackers behind his tightly-closed eyes.

They break apart eventually, gasping for air. ‘Fuck, Sammy,’ Dean says, pushing him off. ‘I need to breathe.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’ Sam gives him a hand up, and pulls Dean into his arms once they’re on their feet. Dean allows the hug, circling his arms around Sam, drawing him close, letting him cling, curling his fingers into Sam’s hair, letting himself cherish the solid warmth of Sam’s frame against his.

Epilogue

Excited barking greets him as he pulls the Impala up in front of his porch.

‘I could’ve walked to work, you know,’ he says, stepping up to the railing and standing on his toes to bring his face up to Dean’s.

Dean leans down for a kiss, his hands warm on Sam’s face. ‘It’s freaking cold, Sammy,’ he says against Sam’s mouth. ‘You’d have frozen your ears off.’

They order pizza and eat it sitting cross-legged on the mattress they’d dragged in front of the fireplace the previous night, Riot stretched out beside them, lazily opening his mouth for occasional tidbits. 

‘Got another book in the mail today,’ Dean tells Sam. He’s gorgeous in the glow from the fire, and Sam can’t keep his eyes off him. He’s back. He’s alive. Some nights, Sam still wakes in a panic, reaching over blindly to the other side of the bed. Dean’s always there, shushing him sleepily, pulling Sam against him and holding him there until they fall back into sleep. Some nights, it’s Dean who wakes up screaming, Sam who curls around him, rocking Dean’s shaking form in his arms, whispering the things he never says aloud to Dean in the daylight, the things he can only say in the dark, when they’re stripped bare against each other, fitting into each other’s broken spaces.

‘Hey,’ Dean says. ‘You with me?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Sam says quickly. ‘Sorry, yeah.’

Dean pushes a large old volume into his hands. ‘Remember this one?’

‘The Gold Rush,’ Sam says, running his fingertips over the old, browning cover. ‘This wasn’t supposed to be on the list.’

Dean shrugs. ‘I figured if I was going to restore Bobby’s collection, may as well get them all.’ He nudges Sam’s bare foot with his own, leaves their feet pressed together.

Sam swallows against the lump in his throat. ‘Thanks, Dean.’

Dean takes a piece of pineapple off his half of the pizza, wrinkling his nose. ‘Bad enough they put fruit on pizza, but what kind of a girl actually orders it?’ he says, and leans across to push it into Sam’s mouth.

Sam laughs around the sweetness in his mouth, and swallows it down before he crawls into Dean’s space, the book pressed between their chests. 

He puts his mouth to Dean’s ear. ‘If you could live in any historical period, which would it be?’ 

Dean hooks his fingers into Sam’s belt-loops and tugs him closer until there’s no space at all between them, his lips curving into a smile against Sam’s neck.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Notes can be found [here](http://lyryk-fics.livejournal.com/17211.html).


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